


The Dragon

by die_eike



Category: Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Fitz and the Fool Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb, Tawny Man Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Genre: Childhood Memories, Dragons, Family Secrets, Gen, Memory Loss, The Mountain Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28669815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/die_eike/pseuds/die_eike
Summary: FitzChivalry's mountain mother tells her story.
Relationships: FitzChivalry Farseer & His mother
Comments: 16
Kudos: 17





	The Dragon

What do I know of dragons?

Little and less, even now. I know that the Old Songs contradict each other and that the written sources are few and confusing.

What I did know of dragons, when I was younger, was that all those I called my people had never seen one, nor felt their effect. I took this as a good thing. Because the rumors had reached even the most secluded vale at one point in time, we were told of a dragon’s beauty and likewise warned of their danger. The story went that they could leave your mind so befuddled that you would forget who you were.

In her heart, my younger self had felt dread at those tales, but when with others, she had laughed and clicked her tongue at the stupidity of folk. But I don’t judge no more. Who am I to judge what had been true and what false, what right? What wrong?

I have had my share of my own dreadful dragon, one that would sink its claws into my skin like a tick claws into a forest animal, where it would stick and suck and drain until it fell away, unnoticed, and the host never the wiser that it had given from itself.

This is how I feel about time.

Why?

Because of the day I spent wondering why it was that something felt so wrong, until I awoke sweaty and in darkness, suddenly knowing that I could not remember his face anymore.

Because I know that time will take from me my memories of him, like autumn takes a forest’s leaves, first changing their colors, then turning them drab and crumpling them up when fallen, until there remains only a skeleton of what had been. Time will take the voice of his laughter and his sweet, sweet scent, of milk and earth and days spent under the sun.

Those days of joy are brittle little things that I guard fiercely, but after so many years, I came to realize that time will snatch even those away, eventually, or drain them of their sensations and significance.

And yet, there are those memories that the dragon of time would shy away from, that it would not touch although I would plead with it. I speak of those memories that hurt like shards of ice flung at me – something that would have been but a harmless splash of water in another time or place.

Why is it that we more easily remember the sting of a thorn and the blood it drew than the beauty of the wild rose?

I do not know. Little I know and less.

I know only that I will never forget how my father’s hand closed around my son’s, the day we took him to Moonseye, or how I walked in their shadows, and heard my father speaking the words, harshly, so that they were believable, and how my steps faltered and my strength left me, crushed by the knowledge that my son, of course, was sacrifice, so that the tides of time could sweep over the mountains and the plains and beyond.

And this they did.

And many a story was told, and reached me, on parchment or root paper or leather inscribed with runes, or by ways of a minstrel’s tale or song. And I would gather them all and consume them, justifying my hunger with the seeking of knowledge, but it was a knowledge that left an aftertaste of estrangement. People would call him by many a name. It was a petty thing I imagined then, when their names reached my ears. In my mind’s eye, I would stand tall and proud before kings and queens and princes, and I would click my tongue at them and tell them that he already had a name and that it was a good one. Keppet, I named my son, for he was an unexpected joy.

But those are reveries from a time long ago. Today, I hear my bones creak and a dragon whispering in my head. I do not know what people will make of my story, how many will read it and how few will like it. I will not judge them. I do not put this down in writing because of fame and fancy. I write because I have always been stubborn. Because the dragon and I, we are fighting. And because I will not let it win.


End file.
